Overview

Murfreesboro VA Medical Center

Chiller Plant Upgrade

Murfreesboro, Tennessee

Overview

Partnering again with AE Works, HGA provided mechanical engineering to upgrade the campus chilled water system serving the 321-acre medical campus. The upgrade included the design and installation of a new chiller and pumps with variable speed drives for two new cooling tower cells and six existing cooling tower cells.

The chiller plant, which consisted of two 1,200-ton centrifugal chillers and one 650-ton chiller, did not provide adequate cooling on peak days and lacked resiliency in the event of equipment failure. An interesting feature was the cooling tower arrangement. Located 800 feet away, condenser water pumps were located under the towers and exposed to the elements. Lacking a headered system, redundancy was hampered at both the towers and in the pipe routing back to the building.

The final solution included a total of 3,600 tons of chiller and cooling tower capacity connected into the existing system to provide redundancy and expansion capacity. The project included reconfiguration of both chilled water pumping and condenser water pumping systems, allowing us to convert to an all-variable speed plant. HGA’s predictive optimization sequencing directs the dispatch of plant equipment and selection of setpoints to improve performance.